Death and the Textile Industry in Nigeria

Death and the Textile Industry in Nigeria Elisha P. Renne First published in 2021 ISBN: 978-0-367-46552-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-05813-7 (ebk) Conclusion Death, deindustrialization, and time (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) This OA chapter is funded by Elisha P. Renne. Conclusion Death, deindustrialization, and time “We felt that society was dragging anchor and in danger of going adrift. Whether it would drift nobody could say, but all feared the rocks.” Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887 This volume focuses on the consequences of deindustrialization on the lives of former factory workers at the Kaduna Textile Ltd (KTL) mill in the Kakuri area of Kaduna and the “work of the dead” in ameliorating these changes. As such it addresses the question, “How is deindustrialization experienced dif- ferently by people in varied places, times, and circumstances?” (Cowie and Heathcott 2003: 5). As many of the workers at KTL came from rural towns and villages to the south of the city of Kaduna, their experience reflects many changes: from rural to urban living, from agricultural to industrial labor, and to new conceptions of time and work. Their experience has been complicated by the failure of the government to pay negotiated remittances owed to KTL workers following the company’s closure, which was not the case for most other Kaduna textile mills. Consequently, KTL workers, as members of the National Union of Textile Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, sought to pressure the company to release these funds in order to ease the difficulties of finding alternative sources of income and of paying for food and health care as well as supporting their families. As their entitlements were not forthcom- ing and former workers were dying, the Coalition of Closed Unpaid Textile Workers Association Nigeria was established in 2005 to maintain a list of textile mill workers who had died since KTL’s closing. Fifteen years later, their remittances have still not been paid and the list of the dead has grown as more have died and been buried in family compounds in their home villages as well as in family houses or cemeteries in Kaduna. Nor has textile manufacturing at the Kaduna Textiles Ltd mill been revived. Several writers, both within Nigeria and abroad, have noted the difficulties of operating industrial textile mills where a tradition of large-scale manufacturing is hardlly over 50 years old. Facilities and trained personnel for the manufacture of new spare parts do not exist, they must be imported. This situation is due, in part, to poor government planning but also due to more pressing needs 136 Conclusion in terms of health and education. Furthermore, as Kaduna was only formally established as the capital of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria in 1917, the provision of electricity only came sometime later. Presently, with grow- ing demand, a deteriorating infrastructure, and a failing privatization scheme, electricity is irregularly available (Sunday 2019). Thus, countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia have had an advantage in this regard. Even African countries, such as Ghana, where the provision of a steady supply of electricity is in place, have had difficulties competing with lower-priced Chinese textile imports, which are produced with the latest equipment and with various effi- ciencies of scale and manufacture.1 Some scholars have argued that the fragility of Nigerian industries was undermined by the sort of neoliberal reforms that the Structural Adjustment Program represents (Akinrinade and Ogen 2008).2 More recent trade agree- ments, such as the ending of World Trade Organization Multifibre Arrangement in 1994 and the implementation of GATT rules in 2005 which lifted trade restrictions on global textile exports and imports, have also affected Nigerian textile production.3 In a way, textile manufacturing and distribution practices in Nigeria have come full circle, approaching the situation in the early 1950s when Nigerians obtained their manufactured textiles from England (and to a lesser extent, from France and Japan) and when European agents working for foreign marketing firms distributed textiles to Nigerian traders. With the decline of Kaduna textile manufacturing, imported textiles once again domi- nate the market, although they are from China, not England. However, before the deindustrialization of the Kaduna textile industry took place, a particular history of industrialization occurred. A period of transition The attempt to provide simple models for one single, supposedly-neutral, technologically-determined, process known as “industrialization”…is also suspect…[For] there has never been any single type of “the transition”. The stress of the transition falls upon the whole culture: resistance to change and assent to change arise from the whole culture. And this culture includes the systems of power, property-relations, religious institutions, etc., inattention to which merely flattens phenomena and trivializes anal- ysis…What we are examining here are not only changes in manufacturing technique which demand greater synchronization of labour and a greater exactitude in time-routines in any society; but also these changes as they were lived through in the society of nascent industrial capitalism. (Thompson 1967: 80). KTL workers and their families have lived through many changes in their lives associated with the industrialization of Kaduna, beginning in the late 1950s. Many moved to Kaduna from rural villages to the south of the city. They became accustomed to particular time regimens, to new sources and types of Conclusion 137 food, and to new social organizations—such as the National Union of Textile Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria and ethnic associations. Despite these processes of urbanization, many returned to their village homes for family affairs and ultimately for burial. Yet what Thompson has noted regarding the sociocultural specificities of industrialization is also relevant to the process of deindustrialization, which began in Kaduna in the early 21st century. While some former KTL workers and some KTL widows have returned to farming on the outskirts of Kaduna, this modified version of urban-rural migration has little appeal to many of their children who were born and raised in Kaduna. For as Orwell (1937 [1958]: 200) has observed, “No human being ever wants to do anything in a more cumbrous way than is necessary.” Buying a variety of foodstuff from the market with income from a salaried job is the preference of these children, not the slowness and tedium of farm work. Yet it is important to realize that while the challenges faced during such transitional periods may be different, they are not new, as Bellamy (1887 [1951]: 36) noted more than a hundred years ago: You must, at least, have realized that the widespread industrial and social troubles, and the underlying dissatisfaction of all classes with the inequali- ties of society, and the general misery of mankind, were portents of great changes of some sort. In the novel, Looking Backward, Bellamy describes a utopian society where these “great changes” included the ending of private ownership, government provision of food to the needy, and where the problem of socioeconomic ine- quality has been addressed.4 Precisely how these “great changes of some sort” will play out with respect to the textile industry in northern Nigeria is unclear, for it is not private ownership, but government ownership by the 19 Northern Nigerian states that has contributed to the ongoing problems of former KTL workers, widows, and their children. Establishing small-to-medium scale industries Yet aside from the uncertain possibilities of reviving textile manufacturing at Kaduna Textiles Ltd, there have been numerous discussions of the possibility of renovating the site to include several related medium-sized textile operations such as the manufacture of military and workers’ uniforms.5 Indeed, in Kano, some medium-sized textile businesses have been able to continue manufacturing, as Sa’idu Adhama, the owner of Adhama Textiles, which has been in operation since 1979, explains: Textile industry, the best we can do as far as I learned in the 70s, was upper medium [size operations]. Anything above upper medium had [a limited] lifespan…Industries—in the northern part of the country, some of these units can operate with solar, you don’t have to the national grid to operate 138 Conclusion the sewing department, you don’t have to the national grid to operate the printing department, you don’t have to the national grid to give you your light…In small to medium industries, you can operate with solar. So, you see, the issue of electricity is 75% taken care of. (Interview: 27 January 2020, Kano)6 Aside from the manufacture of textiles, Adhama mentioned other small to medium-sized businesses, such as soap and sanitary napkin manufacturing, that could be profitably run in Kano, were the initial capital and government administrative support available. In addition to the promotion of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the Nigerian and several state governments as well as private industrial firms have been actively involved in job-training programs. For example, the Dangote Group collaborated with the Kano State Government to build the Aliko Dangote Ultra Modern Skills Acquisition Centre just south of Kano. One area of training will focus on cement use and construction (Ibrahim 2019). Other programs, such as the National Directorate of Employment program in Zamfara State, will train over 400 unemployed young people in the state in tailoring, knitting, confectionary, GSM repairs, and computer use (Umar 2020). Training in the repair of GSM [cell phones] and use of computers is particularly appropriate as another aspect of this transitional era is the dominance of digital technology. Indeed, computer literacy is one of the programs offered by voca- tional training programs in several northern Nigerian states.

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